How to Create & Manage An Event Registration Form In WordPress [HACK]

In this article, we will see the easiest way to create an WordPress event registration forms. We will see how you can use the pre-built event registration form templates and you can easily manage event registrations in WordPress. Its is the same for both online event and offline event registration forms.

If you are an event organizer you would want the attendees to register earlier for the event they want to attend, especially when you have limited seats. You might even want attendees to RSVP (Please Respond) to require confirmation of an invitation to the event.

When you have a WordPress website for your business or organization you could use it to organize events and manage event attendees by creating an event registration form.

WordPress Event Registration Form

To create and manage a WordPress event form or a WordPress event registration form you would make use of the freely available multi-purpose WordPress form plugins and the form templates.

The event that you are organizing could be both online or in-person attendance and it could range from a variety of events such as:

• Trips (School, Company, Camping, etc.,)
• Reunions (High school, Family, etc.,)
• Limited Entry Parties (Fundraiser, Birthday, Super Bowl, New Years, etc.,)
• Wedding Invite with RSVP
• Potluck (Neighborhood, Church, etc.,)
• Contest & Tournament (online & offline)
• Exhibition
• Movie-Night

and many other events.

You might even want to collect payment using these forms. All you need is a  simple event registration form that can be created with a visual form builder plugin in WordPress. Let’s see how you can create and manage an event registration form in WordPress.

Note: Some people might suggest that you use a WordPress Events Manager (event ticket booking) plugin, but I suggest that you don’t follow this route because they’re only used for websites that are fully focused on events and it’s for websites that organize events regularly. 

How To Create WordPress Event Registration Form

For this tutorial, we are going to create an event registration form with WPForms Lite plugin that is easily available in the WordPress repository. WPForms plugin has all the form field and features required to create the basic event registration form.

Basic Fields Necessary For Event Registration Form

• Name
• Email
• Address
• Phone Number
• Checkbox – to answer question and select preferences
• Multi-select – to select which events or which amenities they would like to choose
• Dropdown – to get the number of attendee for the event

Steps To Create Event Registration Form:

Follow to step to create your WordPress event registration form.

• Install and Activate the WPForms plugin
• Then go to WPForms → Add New
• Here you can choose to create a new WordPress event registration form from scratch or use a pre-built form template
• If you have a clear idea about the form field that you need, select “Blank Form” and on the editor page, you can manually drag & drop the form fields
• Then you can change the labels and add options for dropdown, checkbox, and multi-select options

Event Registration Form Templates

• You can make use of the pre-built form templates, which is one of the main advantages of using WPForms form plugin
• On the Add New form page, below the search bar, you could find the list of Categories of the Form Templates
  
• In the templates there are not explicitly any ‘Event registration form templates’, but you have to select the “Event Planning” category and you can find a list of form templates related to registration forms
• Check out all of these event forms and choose the best one for your event
• After selecting the template you can edit the labels and add options for your event
  
• If your form template is in the Pro plan, and you cannot afford to upgrade, you could try to create a similar one using the form fields available in the free plan
• For example, if the form template you want to use consists of a phone number field, you can use a text field or number field which are available in the free version
• After adding all the required fields to the form, click “save“
• You could embed the form on any WordPress page using the WPForms block in the page editor

Create WordPress Event Registration Form With Payment 

If you want to create a WordPress registration form with payment, you would have to attach a payment option as one of the required fields for the event registration form to be successfully submitted. You need to upgrade to the WPForms premium version in order to add payment options to your event registrations forms.

WPForms Pro plugin allows you to integrate with payment portals such as Paypal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and Square payments. Each of these options is available on different pro plans. So buy the plan with your choice of the payment portal.

After buying and activating the Pro license, you would have to install the specific payment portal addon. Then you have to integrate with the secret API keys provided by your payment processor for your account.

So you need to create an account with the payment portal if you already don’t have one. Then add the payment field to the form, for example, the “Square” field as a required field.

A user will only be registered to your event if they complete the payment.

You might want to allow attendees to register for the event even if they don’t buy anything. In this case, the payment field should only come when the user chooses an option that requires payment. To do this you can create the form with conditional logic which will be available on the “Smart Logic” tab when you are editing the form fields in WPForms Pro. This helps to create a form with a conditional payment option.

Managing Event Registration Forms

Now that you have created a WordPress event registration form for your events, you could be wondering how to manage these event registration forms because when a registration form is submitted the form entry with all the data is directly sent to your email.
You would have to manage registrations from your email which is a hectic job.
The best way to manage WordPress registration form entries is by saving the entries to database on your WordPress website.

To save form entries when a user submits the event registration form you can make use of the free Tablesome plugin which helps to save form entries to the WordPress site.

Download Tablesome and give it a try!

How To Save WordPress Event Registration Form Data

You can see the step-by-step tutorial on how to save WPForms entries to the database to save the event registrations from your forms.

From the image above you can see that the user registrations are neatly stored in tables. Using the Tablesome tables you can easily Search, Sort, and Filter the registrations to find the required data.

Not only can you edit and delete the user data, you could also display the entries on WordPress posts and pages in elegant tables.

Display the Event Registration Form Data in WordPress Posts & Pages

Now that you have stored all the data from event registration forms, you might want to display this data on WordPress front on posts, pages, or on CPTs.

Tablesome allows you to display form submissions anywhere on your WordPress site.

To do this you have to copy the Tablesome shortcode displayed under the table title and paste it on the page or post where you want. In the block editor, you have to post it within the Shortcode block.

Export Event Registration Form Data Manually 

Tablesome allows you to manually export the data in CSV and XLSX file format. In the Tablesome table which has your event registration data, you can find the “Export Table” button above. You can click it and then export the data in the file format of your preference.

Automatically Export Registered User Contacts to Email Marketing Tool 

When you are conducting an event you would want to send email campaigns such as event updates, notifications, and feedback emails to the attendees probably using an email marketing tool.

Tablesome allows you to integrate with Mailchimp, a very popular email marketing tool. With Tablesome you can automatically send contact data of the event attendee when a new attendee registers through your WordPress form.

You can see the step-by-step tutorial on Mailchimp WordPress integration using Tablesome and setup this automatic Mailchimp export.

Extra Tip: Grow Email Audience For Your Events 

If you add a checkbox to your registration form to get consent to send promotional emails for future events you could build a good email audience.

For example, your checkbox could say “remind me about future events like this one” and you can send this consent data to Mailchimp using Tablesome, you could contact the same people again and get quick registrations for your future events.